Out Magazine has a feature on chef Angela Dimayuga, the creative director of food and culture at The Standard International.
She has been working to relaunch narcbar inside the Standard East Village on Cooper Square at Fifth Street. According to Out, No Bar is Dimayuga's "boldest project to date."
Dimayuga reimagined the haunt as a "new age gay bar."* Trading the rainbow flags and kitschy tchotchkes of a typical West Village dive for banquettes upholstered with a custom cowhide print and a cocktail menu dotted with innuendos (one sipper is named "Spill the Tea"), she notes, "I want us to be chic. We deserve nice things."
But as a nightlife mainstay herself — Dimayuga throws a roving party called GUSH that centers lesbian and nonbinary femmes — she knows that, beyond any design tweaks she could make, queer and safer spaces are all about the folks who occupy them. With carefully curated programming and deliberate language about whom the space is for, she hopes to manifest a holdout where "the only rule is that it is inclusive and that it is a safe space for all types of folks."
No Bar debuts tonight.
* Updated: The No Bar fact sheet and Instagram account describe it as "a new wave gay bar," not "new age gay bar," per the quote in Out.
Updated 7 p.m.
Eater has a preview with more details here.
